By Rebecca Watson Assistant Secretary, Interior Department
President Bush in May called on all Americans, including Congress, to help him take reasonable actions to manage the nation's public forests and rangelands.
The Healthy Forest Restoration Act (HR 1904) builds on the success of the president's Healthy Forest Initiative. It provides tools for hazardous fuels reduction, biomass renewable energy incentives, watershed assistance, insect and disease research, an early warning system for infestations, and a Healthy Forest Reserve program. It is a balanced, comprehensive approach to forest health.
Opponents of this initiative propose legislation that is narrowly focused on hazardous fuels reduction within one-half mile of towns or actual water supply infrastructure. While human safety is always our first priority, the administration believes the problem is bigger than community protection. As stewards of the land, we must address all aspects of healthy forests and rangelands.
The Healthy Forests Initiative focuses more than 60 percent of its funding on protection of those areas close to communities, but the administration also thinks it's important to protect (1) municipal watersheds, where erosion can destroy a community's water quality; (2) endangered species habitat, where catastrophic fires can permanently destroy vital habitat; and (3) bug-infested or diseased areas, where controls are needed to prevent rapid destruction of forests.
The restoration of landscapes dominated by invasive species is a key part of the common-sense environmental policy that President Bush has asked his Cabinet to implement. Tamarisk, or salt cedar, is a non-native species that spreads rapidly — particularly after fire and floods — in many river and stream corridors throughout the Southwest, from Texas to California and across one million acres of the Colorado River Basin.
Tamarisk can increase the salinity of the soil to the point where native plants can no longer thrive. Where tamarisk has become dominant it excludes native trees, shrubs and grasses, such as willows, that provide important habitat for native wildlife. Tamarisk is turning our arid lands into biological deserts.
Dominance by tamarisk decreases the diversity of plants and animals that are present on our public lands. This is not good land stewardship. Diversity provides resilience to drought, from insect and disease epidemics, and from the disturbance by fire.
Tamarisk is also extremely efficient in removing water from the soil and stream channels. A single tamarisk can remove 200 gallons of water per day — the same amount used by a typical household supplied by a well. Across its current range, the amount of water used by tamarisk in excess of that used by native vegetation, would provide enough water for 4.8 million people.
Case studies have shown that waterways and springs that dried up began flowing again when large areas of tamarisk have been removed through thinning. Water yield is not always improved so dramatically when tamarisk is removed, but in desert or semi-desert lands, even a little extra water can be significant ecologically.
Tamarisk can also have a perverse effect on critical stream-side habitat. Typically, the plants that grow along streams are relatively resistant to wildfire and provide barriers to the spread of wildfires. In tamarisk-dominated areas, however, the stream channels may be more flammable than the surrounding vegetation, and the tamarisk acts like a fuse to spread fire more quickly.
Control of tamarisk is critical for the health of our lands, for resilience to fire, disease and insects, to sustain a diversity of wildlife, and for maintaining our precious desert water resources.
Tamarisk is only one of many species causing concern, and the problem is not limited to plants. Beetles have already infested 15 millions acres of forest in the South and West, as drought and overcrowded forests are contributing to one of the worst bark beetle infestations in our nation's history.
We know what must be done. We know how to do it. We must support a practical common-sense policy to address public land health.
Rebecca Watson is the assistant secretary for land and minerals management at the Department of the Interior and serves on an interdepartmental work group for the president's Healthy Forest Initiative.
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